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Once upon a time I was terrified of flying. I earned my fear by being in a plane that had a rather abrupt descent, and left the flight crew shaken. The captain actually came on the speaker and said, “I don’t know what just happened, but we seem to be all right now. I think we’ll make the scheduled airport.” Think, we’ll make it? I loved to fly until that moment. Nothing like having a stranger gripping your hand and praying the Lord’s Prayer in German, along with everyone Else who wasn’t screaming in terror, or praying something of another flavor. When you think this is it, suddenly the irritating seatmate is just another human being and if you can you should die holding someone’s hand. We landed just fine, it was okay, never found out why we had our excitement. A flight attendant said, “I’ve never had anything like that happen.” I asked, “How long have you worked as a flight attendant?” “Six years.” Yeah, it was that kind of moment.

I’ve had full-blown panic attacks on airplanes. I once had such a tight grip on my husband Jon that I bled his thigh through a pair of jeans. That was a particularly bumpy flight. Our daughter, Trinity, loves to fly, because I did not share my phobia with her. How did I manage that? She sat on one side, and Jon sat on the other. I would keep a death grip on him, while I chatted happily with our daughter. When she was very small the plane we were in took a sudden turn and she paled. I explained, “It’s just like being in a car. The plane had to turn a corner.” I smiled. She smiled, and went back to enjoying herself. That was the flight that I bled Jon through his jeans, all the time chattering away with Trinity explaining Bernoulli’s Principle. She has always been a wonderful traveler. Out of her sight, or secretly right by her side, I have not been.

In the last few years I’ve gotten better at flying. It began with the idea that maybe part of the problem was that one of the reasons I’d started to truly hate flying, other than that whole near death thing, was that we only traveled for tour. Just after 9/11 we went out on tour together for the first time. Before that I’d always done the Weeks’s of travel on my own. We were touring for Narcissus in Chains, and it was memorable for several reasons. One, it was just after 9/11 and the airport security was a little scary. Miles of lines, no one quite clear on what the security protocols were, because they were changing too fast for even the airport personnel themselves to keep up with them. I tried to take pictures of Jon going through the wand search and got a fully automatic rifle pointed at me while the solider yelled, “No pictures at the security point. No pictures!” I raised my hands, camera still gripped and compiled with the wild-eyed fully armed man dressed like a tree. We did 26 cities in 28 days for that tour. Someone in New York with the publishing house bought all the tickets so they were one way tickets to all these major U. S. cities, which meant that we got searched a lot. Jon and I got quite good at assuming the position and letting them pat us down. I no longer remember which airport we got patted down four times before being allowed to board the plane. Worse yet, the regulations on what you could and could not take on a plane changed hourly, it seemed. We had to throw away nail clippers. (I still maintain that if someone could hi-jack a plane with a pair of small nail clippers the plane has other problems, but arguing was not helpful. Everyone was too scared for that.) San Fransisco was cleared for hours on a bomb scare while we stood outside looking at all the glass above and around us, wondering if we had enough luggage on our cart to act as a shield. All this to say, that flying like that, even without extra security measures where you’re getting almost no sleep, and a plane, and a different city, a day, made me dread planes for other reasons than just fear. It wasn’t fun anymore. We saw the airport, the hotel, the event, then the airport, the hotel, the event, and interviews in there somewhere. It was grueling. I began to associate flying with exhaustion and unpleasant events.

So, the new idea was for us to fly more often to fun places for fun reasons. First we found someplace warm by the ocean. My mother-in-law said it was the first time she’d ever seen me relax. On our third trip we bought a vacation home, because it was the only place I relaxed. I began to look forward to flying to the warmth and the water. Proof of concept had worked, so I decided to try and expand the experiment. We had friends out of state that invited us to their home for a party. We flew. I still remember being quite afraid, but the trips to the vacation spot had gotten me to looking out the window without panic. (I used to try to pretend I was on a crowded bus and not look out the window, though I had to have the window open because I am also claustrophobic thanks to a diving accident.) I watched the snake-back curves of a silver river shine in the sun, and felt remarkably calm for me on a plane going somewhere not the vacation spot. It was great visit, and would be the first of many. I would watch that silver river wind like a glittering ribbon in spring, summer, autumn, and winter, so that the landscape itself began to be part of the welcoming. I would look down see the river and know we were going somewhere that was good, fun, and not stressful, not work. This wonderful new calmness about flying expand to business trips to the West Coast, East Coast, and various other places in the Continental U. S. I had the temerity to think I’d kicked my phobia. I have discovered that I was wrong.

The thought of an eight hour plane ride to France has me pretty panicked. It’s my first long trip since I supposedly conquered my fear, and it’s for business. Yes, it’s Paris, and that’s wonderful. It’s the Paris Book Fair and that’s great, too, but it’s still business, and some past bad experiences make it hard for me to be entirely positive about business. Would I be as panicked if we were flying there on pleasure alone? I don’t know. I guess we’ll have to plane a trip to Europe just for fun to find out. But I suspect it’s the length of the flight and my own doubts that I can do it with calmness. Does my nerve fail me? No, I will get on the plane. I will sit and read, and work, and listen to music. My nerve does not fail. Are my nerves frayed? Oui.

We have wonderful things planned for our days off in Paris. I’m looking forward to them. I’ve been practicing French phrases. It will be great. It will. But the flight stands between me and enjoying France like some towering wall to a castle that I must scale to get to the treasure inside. I will do it. The question is only how hard will it be? I take a deep breath, let it out, and wonder. If I had to fly eight hours one way to get to my good friends would I be as scared? Have they become some kind of teddy bear to lure me onto a plane? If so, I need to either see how they feel about flying to France, or make some very quick new friends to greet me when we land. Surely, I am grown-up enough to do this without the lure of comfort objects no matter how good a friends they maybe.